Softly I lay my right hand upon you…

My Ho just returned from Fort Lauderdale, where he attended his mother’s funeral on Sunday. Her passing wasn’t exactly unexpected, but one can never be totally prepared for a loss on that level. As I said when my Grandma was dying, “You can know the train is coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier to take when it hits you.”

I wasn’t able to go with him to Florida, so I sent flowers, which seems like such a useless, pointless thing when I so very much want to be able to, I don't know, make it less hard for him, somehow. Especially when sending flowers nowadays takes all of about seven minutes with the Internet and a credit card. But I did make sure to choose an arrangement that was cheerful and pretty and didn't look like funeral flowers. No spider mums, no gladiolas. That's something, I guess.

The thing is, I’m really, really sad that I never got to meet her.

The funeral part, at least, is in a way kind of nice in that you’re with family, many of whom you haven’t seen in a while, and even though they make you crazy and cause you to fall back into behavior patterns you thought you had outgrown when you were twelve, they’re there for you and for each other, and they’re all sad too. And they get it.

But now that part is over and he and his sister are left with the horrible detail work of canceling their mom’s credit cards and working with lawyers and sorting through the artifacts of her life, and all of that just sucks, any way you slice it.

So please, send some good vibes in his direction.

From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,
You are to die—let others tell you what they please, I cannot
prevaricate,
I am exact and merciless, but I love you—there is no escape
for you.

Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you just feel it,
I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,
I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,
I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,
I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is
eternal,
you yourself will surely escape,
The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.

The sun burst through in unlooked for directions,
Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,
You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,
You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping
friends,
I am with you,
I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be
commiserated,
I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.
—Walt Whitman